Detective Jack Crimson is back. Literally. After a long, much needed, stay in Hawaii, he’s back in Los Angeles.

His first crime? Solving the murder of Donald Redder. The owner, founder, and namesake of famed sugar emporium Donny’s Donuts.

Detective Jack is a choose your own adventure murder mystery on the Tezos blockchain. Each week you are sent two NFTs and must decide which path to take (by keeping one and burning the other). The piece is an AI-assisted visual and a non-AI short text passage that sewn together creates a short story.

Season I had 229 players and a 96.5% completion rate all the way through the game.

Details

• 400 spots

• Each participant will end up with 5 NFTs including the story pass

• 33 tez for the entire season

• Four weeks long. Each week, two pieces will be dropped on Monday and the one you do not want to pursue, must be burned by Sunday at 11AM PST | 7PM UST.

• No secondary during the game allowed. If you buy/sell a piece from season two during the game, that piece stops receiving all airdrops.

• You can hold multiple story passes (a change from season one!)

To participate

Please put an offer of 33 tez on the season two story pass, Donny’s Donuts, by Sunday February 5th at 11AM PST | 7PM UST. There will be no passes available after that and none on secondary, so please plan accordingly.

Allowlist/Raffle Details

• 100 Guaranteed Spots - Top 100 Holders of The Truth

• 30 Guaranteed Spots - Top 30 Holders of Detective Jack Season 1

• 150 Reserved Raffled Spots – Holders of Detective Jack Season 1

• 100 Raffled Spots – Public Raffle

• 20 Reserved Spots - Personal Allowlist / Launch Partners If you qualify for multiple categories, or if there is space, multiple passes per wallet is allowed.

• All snapshots done immediately before offer deadline (Sunday February 5th at 11AM PST | 7PM UST)

Gameplay

Each week, you’ll be tasked with deciding what path you want to pursue to solve the mystery. On Monday, you’ll receive an airdrop of two pieces. By Sunday at 11AM PST | 7PM UST, you must burn the path you do not want to pursue.

The result is that there will be a total of 23 NFTs and each participant will end up with five NFTs (including the storypass) and, hopefully, solve the mystery.

Backstory and Lessons from Season One

Growing up, Goosebumps Choose Your Own Adventure was my jam. Give my Type-A personality a way to control the story and I was in heaven. As an adult, I fell hard for pulp mysteries. In my mind, James Patterson (and his legion of ghostwriters) can do no wrong and anyone who disagrees can bite me.

So last year, after seeing how people were using burn mechanics on Tezos to drop art, I realized, you could use these same mechanics to do an on-chain choose your own adventure. And thus a plan was hatched.

I decided to tell the story of the handsome and troubled Detective Jack Crimson, the last effective police officer in Los Angeles. It’s set in the 1960s in a grungy, pink version of Los Angeles. My favorite movie is a A Single Man which shows a beautiful side to the grungy Americana that is post-war Los Angeles and I wanted to explore that era.

The plan was to do a five-week murder mystery. You’d start with buying a single “story pass” NFT. Every week, you’d receive two pieces representing two different paths toward solving the mystery. The piece would be both a visual piece and a text passage. You had six days to choose a path by burning the one you don’t want.

At the end, each participant would end up with a coherent short story. One detective, er..I mean collector, created a slick Deca gallery of their six resulting pieces which gives a good sense of what is possible.

So, how did it go?

Well, we had 229 people buy a story pass to participate. Of those 229...crazily enough, 221 of them completed all five burn events to get to the end of the mystery. We also froze secondary during the month of the game (more on that later), but after had a robust secondary market with pieces selling or up to 100 tez (🤯).

So that’s all to say…it’s time for Season II. Detective Jack went on a little vacation after solving the mystery of the murder at Thomas Chester, and briefly flirted with quitting the force. But he realized he has no other skills, and plus, it’s his way of dealing with his own inner darkness (something we have yet to explore, but will—worry not).

But before we get into Season II, I wanted to share what we learned from Season I. I would love, love, love for others to do CYOA stories using NFTs and encourage people to ruthlessly copy any of these mechanics if helpful.

Now…onto the lessons!

It Takes a Team

Creating 47 pieces nearly killed me (more on that in a bit), but it would have been truly impossible without a lot of help on the logistics side of the mystery. The amazing Quitters created a spreadsheet that tracked all of the participants’ burn decisions and would generate airdrop lists every week. They used the wonderful NFTbiker tools to track the burns. The NFTbiker toolset also was what I used to actually do the airdrops. In addition to the logistics of the game, I have 3 other amazing Discord mods who helped answer questions for the community during it. Doing it solo would have likely been impossible.

Freezing The Secondary Made the Game More Fun

In designing the game, we had an issue. If people sold pieces during the game, it would be nearly impossible to track who should get what piece. In addition, I wanted the game to be fun for the sake of the game, not just because of speculation. As a result, we created a simple rule. If you sold or bought any pieces during the game, you would get no additional pieces. As each week, the pieces get rarer (and presumably more valuable on the secondary market), the hope was that this would act as strong incentive to follow the rules. And… it worked! During the month, not a single piece was even listed on secondary (!!). This allowed everyone to enjoy the game and solve the mystery. Post-month, the secondary market has been really active and fun as people collect storylines they liked but missed.

Three Types of Detectives

There were three main types of game players. People who sought aesthetics, sought rarity, and sought plot. The plot-seekers were split between people who wanted to solve the mystery and people who were just going after a specific plot because it was weird/funny/sexy/etc. Plot-seekers were the most fun for me as I got to engage with them during the game, make sure I wasn’t being too obvious and adjust a bit as needed. But interestingly, the game worked so well in part because of the different type of players. Early on, the people who sought rarity

47 Pieces Was Too Many

Since CYOA stories create a fractal, every week essentially doubles the amount of content created. Since the final week doesn’t involve a burn, that means the last two weeks had sixteen pieces each. That was too much. It almost burned me out (not a pun), I gained 10 pounds from stress (oops), and wasn’t necessary to build a good mystery. If I had ended a week earlier, the final two weeks would have been eight pieces each. Still intense with lots of plot twists, but not totally wild. For season two, we’ll do a week shorter so I keep my head on straight.

Story Extensions

I had a few ideas for ways to extend the story. I wanted to do a paper book that holders could buy with all storylines, but it turns out that inflation and such has made high quality printing incredibly expensive. I still want to do this, but may wait for a few seasons that I can combine into one book. An idea that worked well was after the launch I did a small series of ‘Director’s Cut’ pieces from some outputs I loved but didn’t quite make the cut during the story for one reason or the other. People could burn any piece to get these, and it allowed people to trade their least favorite pieces away easily and for me to geek out a bit. That worked well so I will do again and am thinking about some other ideas for expanding the story.

Buying a Story Pass

And with that, it’s time to decide if you’d like to join the force.

Link: Detective Jack Season Two Story Pass

Offer Amount: 33 tez

Offer Deadline: Sunday February 5th at 11AM PST | 7PM UST

FAQ

How do I burn pieces?

On the Objkt.com page for the NFT you are looking to burn, click “Actions” on the right side of the screen. Then scroll down to “Burn.”

Is there a secondary market?

If you sell any pieces during the month, the adventure immediately ends for you and the purchaser will not receive any additional pieces from the NFT you sold or bought. After the end of the month, the secondary market opens.

How many editions of each piece will there be?

The edition count of each piece will be based on the number of pieces burned and kept (and one artist’s proof of each). Rarity will ultimately be based on the choices you make and the choices of all other participants.

In total, there will be 23 different pieces minted in season two, with the final two weeks being the rarest editions.

What if I miss a cutoff?

Unfortunately, it means the adventure ends for you. Due to the complexity of managing this, we need enough time to organize the airdrops and can’t make any exceptions. Burn wisely.

This seems intense?

Yes.